New Disney film based on smoke jumpers

A new animated Disney film is being released, based on the smoke jumpers of the U.S. Forest Service, which is headquartered on Mare Island, Forest Service officials announced.

The film, "Planes: Fire and Rescue," opens in theaters today (Friday, July 18), they said.

Disney "reached out to officials from the U.S. Forest Service more than four years ago," asking about all aspects of fighting wildfires, "before zeroing in on one in particular: Aerial firefighting," officials said. "Eventually, the creative team from Disney revealed they were working on an animated, feature-length film about firefighting planes."

The film is about the planes and the men and women that jump out of them, officials said.

"Accuracy was really important to them," Redding-based smoke jumper Joshua Mathiesen said in a prepared statement. "The researchers went into great detail, asking questions such as, 'What type of aircraft do you jump from? How does the chute look when you're floating down? and What kinds of things do you say on the radio?' We basically provided them real world fireline lingo."

When asked if the cartoon characters were fashioned to resemble the real life smoke jumpers Disney officials interviewed for the film, Forest Service spokesman Stanton Florea said, "yes and no."

"They are all depicted as equipment – bulldozers, ATVs and other equipment – but I recognize some of them in the movie's dialogue."

Their personalities comes through, making some of the equipment characters appear to resemble some of the smoke jumpers, he said.

Mathiesen said he and the other smoke jumpers are "very satisfied with the final product," according to the statement

"The cartoon characters are actually much cooler than we are," Mathiesen said.